Events on Friday, December 12th, 2014

Abstract: Spin qubits, due to their long coherence times, offer great promise for use in quantum computation. At the same time, rapidly manipulating, reading out, and coupling such qubits over long distances remain experimental challenges. In this talk I will discuss a scheme that uses a Cooper pair transistor to induce a strong, engineerable coupling between a spin qubit and photons in a superconducting microwave cavity. This scheme offers the potential to both read out and manipulate a spin qubit using only one to a few cavity photons.

Abstract: Blazars belong to a subclass of radio loud AGN with a relativistic jet closely aligned to our line of sight. They are characterized by highly variable non-thermal emission at almost all wavelengths. Similar to gamma-ray bursts, the studies of gamma-ray variability can shed light on gamma-ray emitting regions and production mechanisms in blazars in a relatively model-independent way. With its superior sensitivity, the Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System (VERITAS) provides us with an opportunity to study rapidly variable gamma-ray emission at TeV energies. In this talk, I will describe the VERITAS experiment and show some recent results from our studies of blazar variability that are based primarily on the VERITAS observations but are interpreted in a multi-wavelength context.

Abstract: Patrons of past PizZA participatory parties have made note of a seemingly unphysical amount of sustenance stretched over the multidimensional space-time locale traditionally repeatably referred to as “Holiday Colloquium.” The University of Wisconsin - Madison’s crack-squad of upper-management business brilliants have researched how other institutions manage to acquire the nutritional supplement PizZA in greater quantities and have found an elegant and simple response function. In this talk, a compactified solution to the PizZA problem is presented at first very simply with assistance from the higher-order pile-up theories of Ian and Domino resulting in a final filling factor increase of order 50%.